She twisted her fingers in the net, wondering if she’d misread him. Was he talking about David—or her career?
In the kitchen, she found David drinking coffee with her mother. “Let’s make dinner.”
He pinched his brows together. “It’s not even noon yet.”
“This might take awhile.” She held out her hand and he took it, following her down to the creek bank. They waded in.
Beside her in the creek, David’s vibrancy waned, conquered by a simple net. “I’m gonna get this all tangled up.”
“It’s not hard.” She chuckled at the look he gave her. Like a pouty student. She’d been helping him tutor at an after-school program, and that was the face of every one of those junior-high boys.
“All in the wrist.” She flicked her net, aware she was trying to appear graceful.
He pitched his. She laughed. “It’s not a baseball.”
“But baseball is what I know.” He furrowed his brow as he drew the net back out of the water. “Tell you what, if I learn to do this, you have to learn to throw a curve.”
She moved behind him and slid her arm down his to hold his wrist. Her heart beat under her jacket, against his back, ricocheting up a notch with the idea that if her father saw her, it wouldn’t matter that she was twenty-three years old and could be as close to a man as she liked. “Deal.”
Chapter 13
Her son had made sure she had the kitchen of her dreams, and Grace was always most grateful on the days her anxiety rose like a king tide and manifested itself in the form of shortbread. She thought she’d baked herself out at Christmas, and then Louisa called requesting that cake last week. Now her counters were covered in no less than six-dozen cookies, the pecans finely chopped, the butter excessive.
“Whoa, Mom, did you discover a stockpile of flour or something and decide to whittle it down?” Tennessee came through the back door stomping his muddy boots in the laundry room and shaking the late January rain out of his blond hair.
She poured the coffee she knew he’d come for. “No, simply felt the urge.”
His eyes probed hers over the cup’s rim. She turned to the sink and began rinsing stainless mixing bowls. “Nothing’s wrong, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I never wonder.” He handed her a towel to dry her hands. “I know.”
She followed him to the table where they always sat when he wanted to talk. Here she’d counseled him through grief and rebellion. Helping him work through the torments of the past, so he could find the man God called him to be. These days he was strong and purposed, no longer defined as a fatherless son.
She’d never been more proud. Or felt less needed.
“So what’s wrong?”
Grace sighed and hooked her arm over the back of the chair. Closed-off had never been her style. “Little restless is all. Probably winter slump. Everything is slow right now.”
“But the salon’s doing okay, right?”
He worried far too much about her financial stability. “Typical off-season, but it’s fine. Making desserts at The Hideaway helps keep me busy at least.”
“Ben better be paying you what you’re worth.”
She shook her finger at him. “You better quit worrying. I’m fine.”
“You know, Cora Anne’s mother could use a friend.”
“Louisa and I have never had an easy time being friends.”
“I figure give it time, Mom. Isn’t that what you always say?”
It was. Somehow as the days turned to months and years, the sting of grief lessened and the sweet remained. She knew that to be true. But Louisa seemed to have let resentment burrow so deep in her, it had become like a splinter she’d have to soak a long time in Epsom salt before she could pull it out.
“Cor says her mom really is different, now. Not nearly as cold and unyielding.”
Grace chuckled. “Sounds like Charlotte.”
“Ironically, yes.” Tennessee leaned into her, his gaze intense. “But the difference is, Grandmother doesn’t want to change. I think Lou does.”
A knock sounded on her front door. Tennessee swiveled in his chair. “That’d be David. Told him I’d help him strengthen that tire swing out at the farmhouse before the triplets wear it out completely.”
“Might as well ask him in.” Grace waved at her countertops. “Somebody’s got to eat all these cookies.”
~~~
“Eight schools in twelve years? Really?” Grace broke her shortbread in half. Last piece. She’d told herself that three times already.
David’s foot bounced. She might need to stop refilling his coffee. “Really. One reason I worked so hard at baseball. If I could walk into a new school and make the team, I was instantly in a group.”
She played with her cookie pieces. That feeling of being on the outside as familiar now as it had been in high school. Hard to make friends when no one could come over for study sessions or slumber parties.
“That why you became a coach?”
David’s laugh was brittle, like the remnants of shells beneath her feet when she walked the shore. “No. I wanted to go professional, but I blew my knee out freshman year at Emory. Could still hit, though, so I didn’t lose my scholarship. Just every athlete’s big dream.”
“You met Lou there? Emory?” A story she’d heard.
“Knocked her down with my charm.” His eyes twinkled. “Literally.”
In the kitchen where he’d busied his hands loading her dishwasher, Tennessee said, “Speaking of Lou, you about ready to head over there?”
“Let me finish this coffee, and we can.” David smiled at her, and Grace could see the easygoing charm that had swept away even Louisa Coultrie’s resistance. “What about you? How’d you wind up on Edisto?”
“A story best told over something stronger than coffee and cookies.” Grace twisted her curls over her shoulder. “Basically, I was visiting a friend and working at Dockside. Met Patrick. The rest is history.”
He nodded. “You know, history is my thing.”
But she didn’t tell him anymore, even as they cleared the table. He and Tennessee headed over to fix the swing, and Grace put on her rubber boots, walking Hank down to the creek’s muddy banks. The tide was out, so the dog chased crabs skittering across the muck. Grace picked blades of spartina grass and wove them into a chain, the links looping into one another. Intertwined, like the lives of everyone she knew.
Chapter 14
Edisto Island, Summer 1976
Grace balanced the tray of tea glasses, praying she could navigate the small dining room without spilling. Her table was in the far corner, where men sweaty with work sat shoulder-to-shoulder, eager for their dinner.
She made it across the room, knuckles white on the tray’s edge. Somehow she should use one hand for delivery? The other girls did. Her heartbeat skidded, and her own sweat stains probably blossomed on her new uniform.
“Let me help.” The man at the end jumped up and grabbed the tray. She didn’t move. “You can let go.” He seemed sturdy, dependable. Even his fingernails were clean.
Grace released her grip and passed out the glasses, but not without sloshing. She apologized, even though the spill happened because some men couldn’t keep their hands to themselves.
Her first day waitressing at the Dockside, and if the restaurant hadn’t been so new, she was certain they’d never have hired her, a girl whose syllables twanged rather than rounded off her tongue. When she said her thanks to her helper, she knew he heard the difference.
The corner of his mouth quirked up. He said, all drawl, “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Her cheeks heated. “My friends have a house here.”
“Who’s that?”
“The Bells.”
The man nodded. “Robert and Patsy. They know my parents.” He held out his hand. “Patrick Watson.” His grip was warm. Secure.
“They know mine too.” Or they had. Grace hadn’t figured out a story yet. She’d come ho
me from the hospital with Patsy and Robert, and they offered the first stability she’d known in years. Her mother had been placed in a psychiatric ward, but then released. Grace didn’t know where she’d gone. She wasn’t sure she cared.
A week at the Bells’ Edisto house had turned into longer when she found the job. The manager had winked at her during the interview and said the boys building the new Fairfield resort would probably enjoy having a face prettier than his bringing their shrimp.
“Stop fooling around with the help, Pat.” One of the men—his hand had grazed her thigh when she passed over his drink—waved Patrick back to the table.
“Thank you again.” She fled and waylaid Ginger, who’d trained her the day before. “Want to swap tables?”
The older woman snapped her gum and eyed the construction workers. “Why? They tip good, so long as you put up with their mess.”
“Please.”
“Fine, new girl. But you’re gonna have to learn.”
As the last of the sun faded from the sky, the men left to smoke on the dock. She could see them, as she refilled cocktail sauce bottles. Pinpricks of fire in the dusk.
“So you’re around for awhile?” Patrick Watson stood before her, hands shoved in his pockets.
“I’m around.” She glanced over her shoulder at Mr. Flowers, who frowned. No fraternization with the customers. At least not on the clock.
“Maybe you’d like to get a bite to eat sometime—one you don’t have to serve?”
Nice boys never had the time of day for her before. But this was a new place, a new life. “Maybe.” She let his kindness edge out her smile.
He leaned over, only a breath between them. “I’ll be looking forward to it, Miss Grace.”
Then he strode, so tall and strong and confident, out the door, and she pressed a hand to her chest, unable to calm her quickening heart.
Chapter 15
Lou’s coffee grew cold while she read letters she’d written Mama and Daddy during her Emory years. Riding memories like a johnboat on the creek. Falling in love with David and his eternal optimism. Bringing him home for the first time and then again, for his first oyster roast.
She dumped the cup in the sink and stared out the window, over the pasture to where the land dipped down and the banks of the tidal creek rose.
Her daddy never cut those banks, but he’d trim them out occasionally when her mama got worried about snakes. Vegetation keeps the creek fertile, he’d say. Helps give us what we need. Then he’d go down and haul in a net of the tiny creek shrimp, and Mama’d make chowder or shrimp and grits.
Lou rolled that thought over her tongue. She could almost taste the cream—as surely as she could remember the way her heart raced when she tucked herself against David. Stuffing her feet into a pair of old galoshes from the hall closet, she pulled on a warm coat and gloves. Found Daddy’s old net in the barn.
There are many ways to cast a shrimper’s net, but Lou had only learned the one. She waded into ebbing tide and flailed the net in a wide arc. It landed in a perfect circle on the water and sank. She pulled the line.
Like riding a bicycle.
Her muscles remembered what her mind had pushed aside. The wind whispered over the water and she heard her father’s and mother’s voices arguing over the prices of tomatoes versus trees. The wind shifted and grazed her cold cheeks, Patrick telling her they could have a good life here. She pushed the sulfur smell into her lungs, letting the breeze lift her hair and the memories lose their tang.
David’s old challenge meant she did learn to throw a spiral. A trick that now came in handy with the boys.
She emptied her net over the cooler. A few small flounder—easily tossed back—but only a handful of brown shrimp. Lou frowned.
“Looks like somebody forgot it’s not shrimping season.” Liam Whiting’s voice echoed across the water.
Behind him, the sun dipped low. Lou shaded her eyes. “What are you doing here?” Apparently her manners had gone out with the tide.
“You said stop by anytime.” He strode down the bank, with wide, confident steps. No worry with the sticky pluff mud beginning to ooze as the sifted water flowed back toward the sea. “Seriously, you got a license?”
“Are you here to arrest me for fishing my own creek?”
His eyes twinkled. “Nope. But I do have a proposition for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve been awarded a research grant.”
Her brows shot up. He held up his hands. “I didn’t say anything the other day, because I wasn’t sure yet. We’ll be studying estuaries of the ACE Basin.” He waved at the creek. “Exhibit A.”
She nodded. Their creek qualified. The ACE Basin referred to the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto rivers. They combined together here in this triangle of the Lowcountry to make one of the largest undeveloped estuaries along the Atlantic coast. An area teeming with life and mystery for scientists and conservationists. Like her father had been.
Like he’d wanted her to be.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about an onsite lab of sorts—really more of a place to store equipment, serve as a home base, so to speak.”
She glanced toward the old barn.
Liam nodded. “The barn could work. And I could give you access to be the onsite facilitator. Make sure samples are being handled correctly, kids aren’t poaching flounder for their dinner, and so on.”
This time her smile came easily. “I could do that.”
“Excellent. Want to have dinner with me later and talk it over? I’ll pick up oysters from Flowers because they’re in season.”
Lou rolled her eyes and hefted one end of the cooler. He took the other, and they tossed back her meager catch. “I forgot about winter.”
“Really?” Liam eyed her galoshes and coat.
She shrugged. She had forgotten. How the wind bit through layers but the sun blistered her cheeks, how the ocean churned under a slate-colored sky and lay subdued as a lamb under the china blue. How the creeks rose with rains and swelling tides, protecting the sleeping life within.
The Lowcountry might make an environmental researcher of her after all. The thought tiptoed around her mind. But to Liam she only said, “They’re regrouping in the winter. The shrimp.”
He laughed. “Yes, and all us novice catchers are grateful.”
“Want some coffee?”
“Always.”
He followed her up the bank and over the pastures to the back door. She held open the screen, and he stepped around her.
“You haven’t changed a thing.”
Passing judgment or observation? Standing in her mama’s dated kitchen, in an old sweater and socked feet, she couldn’t have felt more vulnerable if they’d been on a date and he’d asked her back to his place.
Why, for her, dating had never worked. She hadn’t realized divorce meant she was expected to find someone else. Why bother? Now this man was in her kitchen, smiling at her, and he knew the past and the present but not the mess in-between.
Lou reached for the coffee grinder. “We’re still settling in.”
“I’m guessing the boys aren’t here?”
“The quiet tip you off?” She whirred beans over the rattling of her thoughts.
His laugh had a nice, uncomplicated sound. “I’m sure they are not as wild as you paint them to be.”
She filled the carafe with water and kept her back to him. “Have you spent much time with middle school boys?”
“No, but I was one.”
Looking at him then, she found herself blushing, imagining him as a gangly teenager. “Did you have those glasses then?”
He tapped the thin wire rims. “Nope. Big, thick ones so I could see through the microscopes better.”
Now she laughed, and the sound seemed to fracture the cold air that always seeped in through the cracks of this old farmhouse. She’d filled the place with a whirl of gaiety at Christmas, and then let January shroud her with its silence.
Her full name sounded sweet on his lips. Bracing her back against the counter, she turned and forced a narrow smile. “I’m fine. Just feeling a little lost these days. I’m sure the study will help.”
He knit his brows together, clinical now, instead of friendly. “Did you consider a doctorate program?”
She took down mugs to avoid his gaze. “I’ve looked into it. But that’s still a semester away at the earliest.”
When she sat, he tapped the table between them, grazing her knuckles—surely in accident. “What about—”
A car door slammed and shouts filled the quiet.
She arched an eyebrow. “You wanted to meet the boys?”
The door burst open before she could get up. Cole gasped, “Hey, Mom, Dad says—” He stopped at the sight of Liam. “Who are you?”
J.D. and Mac were on his heels. David paused in the doorway. The cold crept back into the kitchen.
In Marietta, he’d drop the boys in the drive and maybe wave as he backed out. But on Edisto, he’d taken to coming inside and lingering.
And now Liam sat in David’s chair.
Not that it should matter. “Y’all, this is Dr. Liam Whiting. He’s a professor at the college and was a friend of your granddaddy’s.” Liam stood as David edged into the kitchen. “He came by to tell me about a research project the college is starting. See if I wanted to help.”
Her rambling didn’t seem to fool either man.
David held out his hand. “David Halloway.” His tone held the same edge as the night she’d first introduced him to Patrick.
I got this, it seemed to say.
But this time Lou wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 16
If he could sit in Grace’s kitchen and eat cookies, Louisa could have any man she wanted over for coffee in hers.
David shoved the vacuum across his tiny living room. After the boys left, he always found a bountiful supply of potato chip crumbs and popcorn in his carpet. He knew their mother never had this issue. They’d argued about Lou’s strict “eat only at the table” rule for years. Mostly because nobody watched Saturday afternoon football from the table.
The Bridge Between Page 6